Online chat w/ XP support last night proved useless; they wanted me to keep the user under whom I was trying to run the scheduled task permanently logged in. I know that it's just a workstation, but coming from serverworld, keeping someone logged in all time time to just run a 30-sec. process every 5 minutes is not a solution.

So, I deleted the task, reapplied SP1, rebooted, recreated the task, and voila... it works, no problem.

I still need to get a little sticker made for my monitor... "Windows: Yeah, it does that".

- G

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As I continue to read through the PDC session list, I find myself torn. Throughout my coding life I have been of two minds: making money, and building something cool. At the PDC, my money-making self wants me to attend all available Indigo/Whidbey sessions since, after all, ASP.net and web services are what I *do*.

However, my builder-self wants to take in as much Longhorn architecture and Avalon code as possible, since the coolness factor (as measured by holding my wife's interest for more than 2 seconds) of those technologies far outweighs the others.

What is a web developer with a jones for client UI & architecture to do? Will there be time to satisfy both? Right now I plan on being good and attending the sessions that would add to my paycheck, with room for some Avalon if available. Do we know when a session schedule will be released?

I'm dying over here!

- G

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A few months ago, I had heard and confirmed that Microsoft was outsourcing yet more of its PSS divisions overseas. While that has had the effect of people I went through training with lose their jobs, along with other people I know having to train their replacements (something that certainly lands on the first 1 or 2 levels of hell), it has never really affted me personally. I've never had to open a non-Premier level support case with Microsoft in any manner once I left the company, and neither did anyone I had heard of. Until now.

I've had issues running a very simple console app as a scheduled task. It just doesn't run, and the ST folder details list the last results as 0x80. the KB gave me nothing, and I wasn't able to find anything inside of MSDN on this. Remembering that I had 2 "in the box" incidents avalable to me for free, I fired one up. I decided to go the web-response route, as I didn't think about this until about 11pm last night, and I really didn't want to deal with it at that point. I submitted the case, and logged off for the night.

Today at lunch, I checked on my case via support.microsoft.com, and found that there was as of yet no response... ok, it's a sev C case, they've got 24 hours. I RDP'd home and checked my personal email, and found I'd gotten a response this morning. It was a long, drawn-out email containing instructions that involved no less than two reboots, and had a problem statement describing my workaround. Granted, having to implement a workaround *is* a problem, but not the root. So, I added my comments into the case using the web form, and proceeded to finish my sandwich.

To sum up: Incorrect problem statement, support pro communication not listed in the case notes, and all the information they wanted? It involved video drivers and other such things... nothing to do with the task at hand. This is only day 1.

This may not have anything to do with the fact I'm working with an foreign outsource company... it may have more to do with the fact I'm working with a v- instead of a regular FT SP... no way to really tell. Maybe I'm a little difficult to work with in this particular area. Having done tech support since forever, and having had one of the highest customer satisfaction/speedy case closure index scores in all of MS IIS support while I was there... I have a hard time with people that can't keep up. Tonight if there is still no response, I plan on calling this one in. I'm probably looking for a solution staring me in the face, buried in an MS SOX object in their internal KB... my kingdom to search that DB just once more.

More to come, I fear.

- G

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You don't know what you want until you see it, and then you can't live without it, unless you have what some superhumans call "self control"... whatever that is.

Right now, I'm trying to find a way to tell my wife that we're moving to my mother's apartment in New Jersey until I climb, scratch, bribe, outwit, outlast, or even earn (what the heck) my way into a job in this office.

That office takes my cubicle, calls it out to the curb, and beats the living daylights out of it... without even breaking a sweat. Being located in the greatest city in the world doesn't hurt either.

Joel (or anyone that knows him), if you're listening... I'm waiting.

- G

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So Russell Beattie and Scoble have agreed to disagree. >

Russell is redirecting everybody referred from Scoble's blog to the 1999 DOJ vs. MS finding of fact, because - and I quote -

>

Trying to keep idiots quiet on the Internet is like trying to keep your child from eating cookies... the more you resist, the louder they voice their disapproval. When I read Russell's full post on the subject, I had decided I sided with him more so than with Scoble, and posted a comment that said so. In that comment, I also happened to mention that referring to Microsoft as "M$", while also bringing up certain images, just serves to egg the pro-MS nutballs on. This comment has since met with his disapproval I guess, and was deleted (but it was there, I have proof)... does this mean I'm a pro-Microsoft nutjob?

I may be a nutjob at times, but I think my temp-nutjob and pro-MS statuses are pretty well mutually exclusive. Yes, I worked for MS PSS for 2 years, but like I've always said... that was phone support. I spent that time cleaning up the messes caused by worm after patch after unintuitive mess day after day... if anything, it cleared my head of any MS-is-all-good thoughts I ever may have had.

I tend to think that Russell wants to be johnny badass, saying whatever he wants, and you can just shove it if you don't like it. Fair enough, God knows there are droves of radio talk show hosts that make a decent living like that. The problem is, he can't roll with opposition, he just pretends it's not there. If that's what he wants, fine... but it makes him Just Another Zealot with a Blog (tm).

As far as Scoble goes... he's Scoble, he's harmless, and I think at times goes swimming in the Redmond kool-aid... just take him with a block of salt, and you'll be ok. :)

- G

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